Sephiroth's Quantum Leap
by Rhianwen
Summary: The final showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth. The outcome in favour of the side of good. But Sephiroth is too much of a Prima Donna to die properly. A very silly odyssey through several mismatched universes with everyone’s favourite stabbity maniac.


Sephiroth's Quantum Leap

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Summary: The final showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth. The outcome in favour of the side of good. But Sephiroth is too much of a Prima Donna to die properly. A very silly odyssey through several mismatched universes with everyone's favourite silver-haired stabbity maniac.

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. Square Enix, or whatever they are now, owns them. I _wanted_ to rent Barret for a weekend, but they wouldn't let me. Gave me some line about how he doesn't really exist, or something. [Pout]

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Notes: Yaay! Rhianwen's finally written a smidgen of Aeris/Sephiroth! Not a good smidgen, mind you, but a smidgen nonetheless. I think this pairing is growing on me. I might actually write a story for them some day. ^_^

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The day had not been a good one for young Sephiroth of the Silver Hair, Immensely Cool Long Black Coat, Eight Foot Blade of Utter Compensation, and Zillions of Fangirls, who should likely have thought themselves just as ill of luck as the pixelated object of their desires to find out how accurate the last one was. 

His nose was very, very stuffed up from the impending cold brought on by waiting for that idiot Cloud Strife and his very slow party for hours and hours and hours, as well as his feather allergies picking the worst possible time to react to the wing that had suddenly sprouted from his back. 

His head was aching both from his cold and prolonged exposure to that choir and orchestra who had come in just to sing and play at him – very loudly – as he tried to focus on sending that spiky-headed moron after his sickeningly cheerful but oddly alluring little flower-girl. 

Then, as if these two things, topped off by ruminations on why little Aeris Gainsborough had been so much on his mind lately – wasn't that just his luck? He finally fell for a nice girl, but not before falling ON her sword-first – hadn't been enough, he was facing lawsuits from the mysteriously appearing choir for accidentally stepping on one of their sopranos! To be sure, the woman's dying shriek had been indiscernible from her singing and thus his Immensely Cool, If Headache-Inducing Theme Song had not been spoiled, but still, there is nothing a villain likes less than the prospect, if he should survive, of being sued for manslaughter of a member of a choir he hadn't even _asked_ for. 

He had just gotten through wiping little gooey bits of soprano from his foot, when a flurry of motion caught his eye.

Apparently, the little ninja-girl that Strife had brought with him had found the remains of the former singer very disgusting indeed, and had backed away with a look of nausea on her face. The nausea had quickly turned to surprise and dismay when she found herself toppling backwards, head over heels, the direct result of tripping unceremoniously over one of the orchestra's flutists. 

Upon seeing this, Sephiroth had stopped to have a properly evil laugh at the expense of the startled, winded ninja and the tuxedo-clad young man currently sporting a flute up his left nostril. Unfortunately, this had removed his attention from the battle, which had given Cloud Strife and that dark-haired woman – and what a woman she had grown into! – who had been his tour-guide up the side of Mt. Nibel years ago, ample time to attack him.

   "Ow! Hey!" he had whined. "Cut it out, you guys!"

   "Yeah! Go, Cloud! Rock on, Tifa!" the tiny ninja, surely no more than twelve – although grown women had been known to look that old next to the lovely Ms. Lockheart before – had shouted triumphantly, scrambling to her feet and accidentally kicking that same miserable flutist in the head.

Apparently, Cloud and Tifa had been rather inclined to listen, as Cloud had continued to 'go', and Tifa had continued to 'rock on' with such horrible ferocity that it was only a matter of time before he, Sephiroth, had felt himself dissolving into a strange, pixely sort of dust, sucked up into some sort of inter-dimensional vacuum cleaner of Sorry-You're-Dead-Now. 

As this had happened, but one thought had crossed Sephiroth's mind: _Oh, damn! I forgot to water my fern!_

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He wasn't sure how much later it was that he awoke to find himself staring up at the top of a much lower cavern than the one he had previously been in. All he knew is that he was wet, cold, his coat had been stolen, and his wing was gone. Stiffly pulling himself to his feet and reaching for Masamune which had landed a few feet away, Sephiroth grumbled in annoyance as a certain familiar young man flew down a waterslide that had mysteriously sprouted up from nowhere, spiky-first.

Still, despite the massive annoyance that _another_ showdown with Cloud was, Sephiroth realized the value of appearances. It would never do to let his enemy know how huge an inconvenience he was. And so, he struck an evil-and-menacing-yet-heroically-noble pose, and waited. 

Eventually Cloud managed to land, although it was on his head, and the force of his landing drove his biggest spiky deep into the ground.

   "Oh, geez, this is embarrassing," Cloud grunted, trying vainly to pull himself from the ground. "A little help over here, Sephiroth? After all, we both want to get home sometime today, right? Too bad only one of us is going to, but I guess you take what you can get."

   "Would you please stop talking?" Sephiroth growled, stalking over to the upside-down Cloud and freeing him from the ground with a massive yank.

   "Ow!" Cloud yelped as he came free, minus the very end of his biggest spiky. 

Sephiroth sighed. He would have liked to just stab the idiot while he was stuck in the ground, but he was almost certain he would have heard from the bespiked young man's agent for such a thing.

   "Great. Thanks," Cloud spat, glaring at Sephiroth as he brandished Ultima Weapon.

   "No problem," Sephiroth spat back, glaring at Cloud as he brandished Masamune.

   "Now we finish this," Cloud announced menacingly.

   "My thoughts exactly," Sephiroth agreed.

   "I've been waiting for this."

   "I've been waiting for you to finally show up."

Likely, the two would have continued to trade witty dialogue that failed to either be witty, or to even qualify as dialogue, for several more minutes, had Tifa's voice not called from somewhere above them,

   "Cloud! If you don't hurry up, we're leaving for ice cream without you!"

   "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Cloud howled in agony, a rush of energy coming over him and making the little meter with his name beside it in small white letters, flash all different sorts of colours, rather than remaining merely the blue that it was normally. 

   "Let's get outta here," one of the Tonberrys that had shown up to repair the ruthlessly shattered fourth wall, muttered to the other.

   "Yeah," the second Tonberry agreed, glancing nervously at the utterly livid blonde man. "This could get ugly."

Cloud and Sephiroth watched curiously as the two little green creatures scuttled away, and then Cloud turned back to the business at hand. Charging at the other man, he slashed ruthlessly and repeatedly at anything that happened to catch his eye, which, unfortunately for Sephiroth, was mostly him.

   "Ow," he said flatly as another sword stroke connected with him. "Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow."

   "AAAAAAAAAARGH!" Cloud bellowed as he leapt high into the air and delivered a final slash from the Ultima Weapon.

   "Ow," Sephiroth said once again as he flew backward into a stream of light, bleeding profusely as he went.

   "That's what you get for almost making me miss ice-cream," he thought he heard Cloud call after him tearfully as he was enveloped in the light. 

That was the last thing he would hear for a long, long time…

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Ten minutes later, the crater was once more empty and quiet. Sephiroth struggled to his feet and hunted up the sword that had somehow been thrown several feet from him.

Then, looking up at the narration, he frowned.

   "Ten minutes? You call ten minutes a long, long time?"

However since the narration refuses to get involved in a lengthy, ultimately useless argument with Sephiroth, there was no reply.

The severely battered young super-villain sighed heavily as he slumped back to the ground, his back to a jagged rock.

   "It can't end like this!" he insisted quietly to himself. "It just can't end like this! There has to be something else I can do! There must be more people to bring terror and pain to!" 

As it so happened, at these fatal words, a glowing circle, about the size of his fist, appeared before him.

   "Oh, that's a nice answer to my problems," he groused. "A circle. Thanks a lot, Powers That Be! Shmucks," he concluded under his breath.

Then, as he dodged a lightning bolt that seemed, oddly enough, to have appeared out of nowhere and aimed for him, he noticed that the circle was growing. First it reached the size of his head, then of a chubby man's torso, and finally, the size of a hot-tub of approximately five meters in radius.

Sephiroth frowned.

   "Hold on. Are you trying to...tell me something?"

Sighing in annoyance, one of the younger, more mischievous Powers that Be reached down a mighty hand and gave that aggravating human a good swift Smurf-Kick in the posterior.

   "Ow!" Sephiroth began, before noticing that he had tumbled headlong into the glowing circle. "Hmm...I get the feeling that something's going to happen. Something...stupid."

No sooner were the words out of young Sephiroth's mouth, when the circle of light gave one final flare and then shrank rapidly. 

Seconds later, the decimated North Crater was completely abandoned. 

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   "Hey, guys, my life is crap," Squall Leonheart announced conversationally as he strode purposefully through the fields surrounding Esthar in a manner completely belying the utter purposelessness of his current task of improving his skills and endurance. 'Levelling up', if you will.

   "What was that, Squall?" Zell called from a few paces behind him.

Squall stopped and turned.

   "I said, my life is crap," he repeated, annoyed. "I mean, I've got all this responsibility thrust upon me. I didn't become a SeeD because I wanted responsibility! Not only that, but Rinoa, whom I have decided totally out of the blue that I have feelings for, is in trouble! _And_ I have to go put my life in danger protecting the world from a bunch of badly-dressed women!"

   "Yeah, but we all have to do that," Zell said seriously.

   "Exactly," Quistis agreed emphatically. "And anyway, Squall, whatever happened to all that garbage you spouted at me about how everyone should handle their own problems and not try to foist them off on others by actually _talking_ about them?"

   "Well…that's when it was you, and not me," Squall said seriously.

   "Every day," Quistis sighed. "Every single day, I regret that we ever revived him after the Deling City incident."

Zell took her hand and patted it comfortingly, and then promptly regretted it as he became intimately acquainted with the sensation of a whip striking him soundly on the back. What he didn't realize was that this was merely Quistis' way of saying thank-you. We are glad to report that he would soon understand this, and that the two would find perfect, if somewhat kinky happiness together, despite the abundance of canon evidence against such a pairing. 

   "Dammit!" Squall hissed.

   "What?" Quistis asked boredly.

   "Now I dropped the potion I was trying to enjoy! It's spilling all over the ground!"

   "Then pick it up, man," Zell suggested.

Squall frowned slightly.

   "All the way down there?"

   "Fine," Quistis sighed. "I'll get it."

As she kneeled to pick up the nearly empty potion bottle, an odd thing happened. Ominous music filled the air, and seconds later, an invisible choir began to sing.

   "What the hell did they just say?" Zell asked.

   "Estuans interius," Squall replied wisely. Then he frowned. "Hey, isn't the more important question, 'Where are they singing from?'"

   "Not to mention, 'why are they singing?'" Quistis added.

Squall and Zell had just begun to nod in agreement, when something high in the sky above the young woman caught their attention.

Squall shrugged with an inward, "whatever".

Zell sprang into action.

    "Holy crap, Quistis, get out of the way!" he yelped, grabbing her arm and dragging her back just as a tall, silver-haired man, shirtless aside from a few straps, plummeted from the heavens, sword-first.

The three SeeDs watched in consternation as he hit the ground, driving his sword into the soft earth up to about its fifth foot.

   "Damn!" he grumbled, trying vainly to tug it free. Then he glared at Quistis. "You weren't supposed to move!"

   "Oh, well, excuse me for not dying," Quistis said with a pleasantness that even the most unobservant person in the world couldn't have mistaken for genuine, if one does not count Laguna.

   "I don't understand it," the man muttered to himself, shaking his head, and ignoring Quistis. "The last girl didn't move. I thought that was how it worked."

   "Look, who are you?" Squall demanded, losing patience. "Not that I really care or anything; the SeeD manual just told us we're supposed to talk to everyone we come across."

   "That's the strategy guide," Zell corrected helpfully.

   "I am Sephiroth," the man replied, thus ensuring that Zell was completely ignored. 

He pouted. 

Quistis gave him a comforting whip stroke. 

Squall and Sephiroth ignored their antics, as doubtlessly many readers currently are.

   "So, what did you want anyway?" Squall asked, determinedly retaining his businesslike manner.

   "Well, I was trying to deliver plummeting stabbity death to another unsuspecting female, but she's kind of ruined that," Sephiroth replied, casting a dirty look at Quistis.

   "Poor baby," Quistis said mildly.

   "Anyway, since my plans have been all but ruined, I suppose I'll be leaving now," Sephiroth continued.

   "Must you?" Quistis asked.

Sephiroth glared at her again. 

   "Yes, unless you'd like to kneel down again and wait for me to plummet from the heavens and slay you."

   "No, but thanks anyway," Quistis said. "Hey, it's the closest thing I've gotten to a date offer in a while," she explained when Zell looked at her oddly.

   "Very well."

With these final words – all two of them – Sephiroth stepped into the sphere of glowing light that had coincidentally appeared.

Squall, Quistis, and Zell watched in varying degrees of awe and indifference as the sphere shrunk, and then disappeared all together. The three of them glanced at each other in silence, none entirely sure what to say. 

Squall was the first to break the silence.

   "Have I mentioned that my life is crap?" 

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End Notes: I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for my utter lack of characterization in the FF8 cast. The lack of characterization in the FF7 cast, I make no apologies for. Uh…anyway…

I realize that Squall is more than an angsty little twerp, I realize that Quistis is not a bondage nut, and I realize that Zell actually does have a personality. What can I say? I had a little too much fun, and I have no grasp on the FF8 characters as of yet.

Still I hope this was still amusing in some way.

Join us (well, me) next time to see more people terrorized, harassed, and otherwise annoyed by our travelling silver-haired super-stabbity villain!


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